When comparing Civilization V vs EVE Online, the Slant community recommends Civilization V for most people. In the question“What are the best PvP games on Steam?”Civilization V is ranked 7th while EVE Online is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose Civilization V is:

Civilization V has a large assortment of nation leaders to choose from that have an even bigger assortment of scenarios that are able to play out for said leaders. Each game can be quite unique in this way as each leader allows for a different nation to be controlled.

Pros

Pro

Endless scenarios and replayability

Civilization V has a large assortment of nation leaders to choose from that have an even bigger assortment of scenarios that are able to play out for said leaders. Each game can be quite unique in this way as each leader allows for a different nation to be controlled.

Pro

Fantastic tactical combat

Civilization V has a great combat system that feels very tactical over previous versions as there is no stacking of troops, but with the new hexagonal grid players can surround enemies as well as allow for better tactics when planning attacks.

Pro

Beautiful graphics

From the players cities and armies to the lush landscape, Civilization is quite a beautiful game for those with systems powerful enough to push the graphics to the limit. Even when on lower graphical settings the game looks lush and well animated.

Pro

Customization through policies

Policies are used as a tool to gain a variety of customizations that benefit ones society. There is a branching tree of policies that will allow the user to pick certain aspects that will suit them best such as adding law or religion to ones society which will give gains in certain aspects.

Pro

Real freedom

You can do anything. literally anything. You can become a massive entrepreneur and deal with billions of ISK, set up a pirate base in wormhole space, explore anomalies, build massive ships, become CEO of a player-run industrial corporation. There's tons and tons and tons of stuff. This is likely the most sandboxy of MMO sandboxes.

Pro

360' freedom of movement

Up, down, left and right simply stop having a meaning when it comes to space. Making for a true space simulator in that the controls mimic how objects would behave in a real space environment.

Cons

Con

One unit per tile

Civ 5 restricts you to having one unit per tile, but has an AI unable to handle that restriction well, and doesn't even have decent pathing for units. Late game becomes a slog of ordering each unit individually due to poor pathing.

Con

Most victories won by timed or military victory

It can be pretty difficult to win by diplomacy or culture which does add some challenge to the game but it can get tiresome if one keeps winning by only military or timed victories.

Con

No stats on other Civ attitudes

Unlike past Civilization games there are no longer stats on the attitudes of the players surrounding Civilizations. This allowed one to see how each other nation felt about the player, but now that it is gone one has to guess, which is definitely not as helpful.

Con

No steam workshop support on Linux

The Linux port currently does not support steam workshop, and as the mac port made by the same developers has not received workshop support despite having been out for several years, it is unlikely that it ever will.

Con

On the decline

The player number is about half of what it used to be and continues to decline. The game has been around for 10 years so it's hardly a surprise.

Con

Spreadsheets in space

At the very core, that's what it is. You'll be looking at tons of stats, calculating % resistances and DPS. It's a paradise for math savants and economics geeks, but not so much if you just want to blow things up quickly.

The graphics are there, but combat takes place at a few kilometers at least, so you won't be ever seeing your ship and the enemys' at the same time (unless as tiny silhouettes). Which only enhances the feeling that combat is a set of dynamic spreadsheets rather than a real visceral thing.

Con

Requires lots of time invested

Because of the open market thing even going out on a quick mission may require you to gear up your ship first, which takes ages as you jump across multiple stations to get the two dozen different modules required to outfit your ship.